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Subsidy Wars, The Sequel opens with the Big Bad Villain — starring, once again, Ontario — flaunting its subsidized charms and threatening to lure the Object of Our Desire, the fickle film industry, away from Beautiful And Wholesome But Naive B.C. Meanwhile, a Little Band of Heroes struggles to Save the Day. But to defeat Evil on this scale, they need the help of seemingly uncaring Big Brother in Victoria. Can he be convinced to intervene in the Nick of Time?

If you find this trite and even familiar, your memory is to be commended. The words are lifted almost word for word from a column I wrote early in 2010.

Yet, three years old or not, this is the old story, masquerading as new, that is unfolding today. Not that I’m prescient, but rather that the film industry and its backers are tiresomely repetitive.

The 2013 version of this drama features an online petition that, when I checked on Tuesday afternoon had topped 16,000 signatures and was slowly growing.

The petition is sponsored by a group called Save B.C. Film, and its pitch for support underlines the industry’s need for the provincial government’s “enthusiasm for maintaining an attractive taxation scheme.” That is, bigger subsidies.

As well, “We need your support,” it continues. “Without it, you jeopardize not only our industry standards, but our livelihoods as well, leaving many of us with no alternative but to draw upon social programs like employment insurance and welfare.”

The petitioners make a valid point that B.C. is losing market share in the Canadian film business to Ontario, which has a richer package of subsidies than ours. But the premise of the petition goes well beyond this, maintaining our dud of a provincial government has done nothing to stop the film industry’s steady slide.

But this is wrong for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, B.C. filmmaking is not exactly in a steady slide. The total that the industry, mostly foreign companies, has spent in B.C. has wavered for years around the $1-billion mark, mostly on the plus side. To look at a few specific examples, in 2011 — the year the Canadian dollar finally overtook the value of the U.S. greenback — it actually rose 16 per cent to almost $1.2 billion. And in 2009 — the year before the province caved in to a pitch from the industry for bigger subsidies and the year in which the Canadian dollar made its greatest strides in value — it hit a recent-year high of more than $1.3 billion.

So it’s volatile, yes. But it’s not in a steady decline, and not particularly tied to either subsidy levels or the dollar’s value.

Even more off-base is the presumption of the pro-subsidy tub-thumpers that the provincial government has done nothing for them. Indeed, my view is that it does too much to prop up the 25,000 or so British Columbians who work in movies and TV — at the expense of the 4,375,057 or so who don’t. Last year, the province spent $219 million on the industry’s “tax credits,” and this year the number is expected to hit $325 million.

Finally, there’s the question of whether failing to raise these already massive subsidies would really jeopardize the industry and throw all 25,000 out of work?

No one knows the future with certainty, but this is highly doubtful, to put it mildly. A study done half a dozen years ago reckoned that if the subsidies were completely dropped, the B.C. industry would likely shrink by about 15 per cent — significant, but not catastrophic, and well within the fluctuations we already see.

But even if the petition-writer’s worst hyperbolic nightmare came true and all 25,000 film and TV workers lost their jobs, where would this leave the rest of us?

By my calculations, we might be better off. Even if, as the writer warns, they all end up on welfare, the cost to the taxpayer for each single individual will be just $7,320 a year. Which is a lot less than the $13,000 that, on average, we pay now to subsidize each worker in the industry.

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